Mission Eastis a Danish international relief and development organisation, working in Eastern Europe and Asia. Our aim is to deliver relief aid, to create and support long-term development projects and to empower local aid organisations to carry on the work independently. Making no racial, religious or political distinction between those in need, we aim to assist the most vulnerable.

From death to life in Nepal

For more than three years, Mission East has worked in one of the most remote and poorest regions of the world, the Humla and Mugu districts of the Karnali Zone in the northwestern corner of Nepal.
This region, which lies in high Himalayan valleys where Nepal, India, and China border one another, is among the poorest and most isolated in the country. In addition to chronic poverty, the area was particularly hard hit by the Maoist insurgency in Nepal and fighting between insurgents and government forces. Following the 2006 peace agreement, people have been able to return to their homes and are largely free from violence. For the most part, normal life can begin again.

Serious social problems remain to be tackled, however. Clean water and illnesses from drinking impure water are among the worst of the problems. Infant and child mortality are high. Illnesses also cause ripple effects in these agricultural villages: sick children cannot attend school and men and women affected by illness cannot work, holding families in states of poverty. Clean water sources are needed to eliminate the use of dirty water from irrigation canals, open pools (often used by animals for drinking) and rivers.

For the past three years, Mission East and our partner KIRDARC have therefore worked together to improve the lives of 25,000 of the poorest people in Karnali Zone, working to address the problems of disease, child mortality and poor general health through the building of clean water systems and irrigation systems, through hygiene education to prevent further spread of diseases, through training in better agriculture techniques to provide more reliable harvests and more varied diets, and through building the capacity of the villages to organize themselves and work on their own self-reliance.
Earlier this year, Managing Director of Mission East, Kim Hartzner, visited the Karnali Zone with his father, René and son, Philip. Together, Kim and René founded Mission East in 1991. Since 1993, René had travelled to Nepal, starting up the work of Mission East in support of agricultural and livelihood programmes in the southern part of the country.
This, however, was Kim’s first ever visit to Nepal.

Travelling by helicopter to the remote Karnali Zone, the Hartzners were greeted by villagers thankful for the projects that had improved their lives and also saved the lives of so many of their children.

Managing Director Kim Hartzner in conversation with a girl heading up the children's club in the village of Upper Mundi. The children are the key messengers of the hygiene messages broadcast to thousands of people in the area. The villagers learn how to cook, how to use the new pedal toilets, and how to wash their hands.